The circus called; it wants its dresser back.

I mentioned last week that among the recent crazy things I had done was the act of painting our curbside dresser, which we’re planning on using as the TV stand in our living room, a heinous shade of blue. Now, the fact that I am about to show you said heinously blue dresser should affirm at least three things in your mind:

1. I have no shame.

2. I don’t take myself seriously.

3. I really am only pretending to have a partial clue about decorating.

Warning: You may want to put on sunglasses before viewing the following image.

I should probably follow this anti-reveal by saying that the reason we ended up with this blinding shade of blue is because we first painted it with the leftover paint from our bedroom walls(Valspar’s Seashell Gray), and it blended in with the white wainscoting behind it way too much. I was contemplating other colors, mainly a darker taupey gray, when I made this pillow….

..and in a moment of *brilliance* thought that maybe it would be a great idea to tie in the color of those beads by painting the dresser—you guessed it—a similar color. So we taped about 83 swatches to the dresser and wound up with Benjamin Moore’s Bermuda Blue.

Fortunately, we only put on one coat before realizing that it was…not exactly what we had in mind. I know what you’re thinking: why did it take you so long to figure that out? Well. For one, we kept telling ourselves that of course it would dry darker. Also, we were painting at night in an underlit room. Underlit room=the color looks completely different. You can see the difference here:

If you still have questions, please see #3 at the beginning of this post.

My next *brilliant* plan was to add some black to the blue so we wouldn’t feel the urge to tame a lion or something whenever we walked in the room. However, by the time it was dark enough to not be blinding, it was just too dark in general, and didn’t contrast enough with the chairs. Boo. So the dresser has been banished to the outside for Power Sanding: Round 2, and a quart of Benjamin Moore’s Ozark Shadows (which is a taupey gray, my initial instincts for the dresser, anyway) is sitting in the kitchen, waiting patiently to be The Final Answer. I still want to tie in that brighter blue from the beads, but in much smaller doses. Like perhaps on a button.

Meanwhile, we’re brushing up on our tightrope walking and flaming torch juggling since I’m pretty sure that as soon as Barnum & Bailey rise from the dead and see this disastrous project they will phone us immediately and recruit us as Resident Designers For All Circus Scenery Plus Flaming Torch Man Understudies. I can totally picture a bearded lady swallowing a sword while unicycling on our dresser, can’t you? How about a clown cat, at least?

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I’m thankful that I can laugh about this kind of thing instead of letting it completely ruin my day! :)

Another Pillow Makeover?

The following is a list of the crazy things I have done lately:

• Made a million pillows.
• Changed the color scheme in the living room 4,598 times.
• Painted this curbside dresser an absolutely heinous shade of blue. But more to come on that next week when its shade is no longer heinous. I hope.

Okay, that’s the short version of the list. I won’t mention my reaction to the comment “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1942.”

Here’s the latest and probably final version of one of the million pillows I made.



It’s the final version mainly because I like it a LOT this time. And Rick approves because he didn’t like the leaves that I made initially to be the accent color in the room, declaring the shade to be somewhere between vomit and the slimy things I throw on our compost pile:


AND he approves because I have gotten rid of any and all pink elements from the living room, which marked the second round of Erin Has No Idea What She Is Doing When She Decorates. You see, for a brief time, I wanted pink to be the accent color, and the version of the pillow you never saw had pink flowers on it. You can sort of see it here:


Truth be told, bubble gum pink was just not the Best Choice. Elle Woods may have just died a little when I said that, but even I had to admit that it wasn’t working. And I am what some might call A Fan of Pink. That is, that’s what I’d be called if anybody actually called people things like “A Fan of Pink.”

The pink purge all started when I found this old necklace:


First, I cut off some beads before I could change my mind, then got busy making a fabric flower out of one of my many fabric scraps. It’s the same fabric I used to give a makeover to this lamp, gray denim.

This is what my petals looked like before I began gluing them around the bead:


I made them imperfect on purpose, just because it felt better that way. I hot glued the small petals around the bead first, then layered the larger petals behind them.


The final step was arranging my new flower with not only the black roses I made initially, but also with some other beads to fill out the arrangement. The whole process, from cutting to gluing, took less than a half an hour.



I’d include a picture of the whole end of the couch now, but it’s light outside for approximately 5 minutes these days, no minutes of which are spent by me at my house taking pictures of things, and the result would be less than desirable.

So that’s the story of my changing color scheme and pillow makeover. Does anyone else change their mind about color every day, or is it just me? Have you ever used an old piece of jewelry in a project? Do share. :)

***Linking this to the CSI Project!***

Increasing Our Living Room’s Privacy, Sort Of

I mentioned waaaaay back in this post that one of the things we needed to do in our living room was to add blinds so that our neighbors couldn’t watch PBS with us. Well, we finally got around to doing that, sort of, as well as adding new curtain panels. We didn’t end up going with blinds because A) it would’ve been a nuisance to climb over the couch when we wanted to open or close them and B) they would have blocked too much of the light coming in. So, we settled for sheer curtains instead, which means that the neighborhood technically can still set up lawn chairs outside our bay window and live vicariously through our cable-less existence, except the quality of their picture will be significantly reduced.


In Enchanted, Giselle cuts apart McDreamy’s Robert’s curtains to make herself lovely little dresses. In my life, which frequently contains just as much spontaneous singing as Giselle’s does, I cut apart old prison garb from my former life of crime and make them into curtains. We’re practically twins.


Seriously, though, black and white stripes do really make me think of an inmate sometimes. (Has anyone else wondered why Robert has silky aqua drapes with pink and gold embroidery in his living room, though? I mean, really.)


Nonetheless, I am happy with our new curtains.The fabric is 54” Premier Prints Canopy Stripe in black, purchased here and then rotated and sewn together to make extra wide curtains with horizontal stripes. You can’t tell from the fronts of the curtains, but they are made of two separate rectangles of fabric:


The sheer fabric is extra wide 108” fabric purchased here.



As always, the cats were super helpful with the creation process, and graciously took turns making sure the fabric didn’t run away.



We needed a way to easily slide the sheers open to let in more daylight, so we attached them to silver shower curtain rings. This might be a temporary solution, but at the same time, I really don’t even notice them all that much. We’ll see.


Next step: hang stuff on walls. ASAP. As soon as I figure out what stuff to hang on the walls, that is. We’re also in the middle of giving our curbside dresser a makeover and are hoping to have that in as our new TV stand by sometime next week month year. Hey, we’re sort of slow around here. Silly things like needing a paycheck just always get in the way, you know? Plus, writing this post just took me way longer than it should have due to a certain relentless feline who thinks that the mouse arrow and the words being typed on the screen are just about the greatest things since these packing peanuts.


Do your cats “help” you with your fabric projects and computer work? Any inexpensive but slightly nicer replacements for shower rings that you can think of? Anyone else love everything about Enchanted, with the possible exception of Queen Narissa’s creepy tongue? I’m all ears. (Or would it be “all eyes”?)

Pinterest-less no more.

It's official. I caved. In the name of less chaos and more order, I registered for Pinterest. Strictly for organizational purposes, of course, because well, like I mentioned here, I just don't know what things like “Jarrod Carved Wood Mirror Pendant Light Art” and “Suburban Home Ramsden Aqua” are when I am staring at their names in my bookmarks folder, and I have to open the webpage every time I want to see what the heck it is and why the heck I bookmarked it.

So far, Pinterest is working swimmingly in terms of organization, allowing me to quickly see the fabric I've been considering without opening 9,857,326 tabs....

...and the projects that I may attempt soon, or at least think about attempting at some point before I enter a nursing home.

I know that I am waaaaay late to the party, but that's nothing new for me. Blooming late is my specialty, as is being fashionably tardy. Who was still losing her baby teeth well past everyone else had learned that the tooth fairy didn't exist? Me. Who didn't have a cell phone until her sophomore year of college, and still, to this day, has--gasp--never sent a text message? Yup, me again. And who is still waiting on those womanly curves you're supposed to acquire when you "grow up"? ME. Maybe when I'm in a nursing home I'll be able to check these things off of my list, you know, in my spare time between pureed lunch and Bingo.

Are you on Pinterest? What is your favorite use for it? Is there anything you've ever been "behind the times" on? :)

So if you're interested in finding out what "Suburban Home Ramsden Aqua" actually is (I'm sure you're dying to know...) you are welcome to

Tray Makeover: Inspired by the Peacocks at West Elm

I am Pinterestless, having not yet taken that particular social media plunge. However, as I continue to sift through bookmark labels that I don’t understand (like “Jarrod Carved Wood Mirror Pendant Light Art” and “Suburban Home Ramsden Aqua”—are these reminding anyone else of the random keywords I mentioned here?) I am beginning to see the value of sorting these finds by category and picture, for us visual learners.

But Pinterestless or not, I can still participate in the Pinterest Challenge, right, since the general idea is to actually make something that you say you can make and have even gone so far as to bookmark it in your “I can make that” bookmarks folder? Hence this tray …

…inspired by the design on this West Elm soap dish that, forever ago, I mindlessly added to my disorganized list of someday projects bookmarked.

You see, the problem with having a fabric ottoman for a coffee table is that when you sit down with a beverage, you have no safe place to put it. And with three zany cats around (okay, two zany cats, and one cat that just likes to drink out of your glass of water and/or milk), nothing fragile/liquid is safe for any length of time.

To solve this problem, I first spray painted this beat up tray that I bought at Marshall’s a while ago. It was only $1.50, and I knew that it could potentially see better days.

Then, I drew the peacock image on a scrap piece of paper with pencil before tracing it with black marker for optimum scanning purposes.

After scanning my drawing, I imported it into Sure Cuts a Lot (for any and all Cricut owners—this program is a must-have), traced it, and set the Cricut to work cutting out the image on outdoor (and therefore waterproof) adhesive vinyl (using low pressure and blade depth of 6 so that it didn’t cut all the way through the vinyl lining).

The last step was to peel off the image and stick it on the tray. I decided to leave some of the pieces solid just to change it up a little bit.

At this point, I was pleased with my feathery bird, but not with the edges of the tray. Like I said, the tray was beat up, so it didn’t spray paint perfectly.

There are a few ways I could have fixed it, but I decided just to cut strips of the adhesive vinyl and trim the edges with that.

All done!

And oh, if you’re wondering about my choice of pink, A) it’s my favorite color, today and B) I’m on a quest to make that the accent color in the living room. So far, Rick isn’t resisting too much, but that might be because I let him buy expensive cookies at Wegmans.

Linking up to the Pinterest Challenge here, here, here, and here.